Powering Britain's
Battery Revolution

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Research

The Faraday Institution research programme priority areas span ten major research projects in lithium-ion and beyond lithium-ion technologies. The organisation also runs a number of focused projects on topics to benefit emerging economies and a set of seed projects to help identify future research priorities. The research programme is multidisciplinary, highly collaborative, and draws together the best of UK university research groups and industrial partners.

Priority Areas

Research Stream 1 – Lithium-ion

Projects optimising the current generation lithium-ion based batteries where there are still considerable gains to be made and where research breakthroughs could start to be realised in commercial batteries within 3-4 years. This includes a project on recycling and reuse of batteries and another on battery safety.

Research Stream 2 – Beyond Lithium-ion

Projects that are higher risk, higher reward and could facilitate the long-term commercialisation of next-generation battery technology that still require considerable research in the areas of materials discovery and optimisation.

Lithium Ion

The Faraday Institution’s portfolio of research includes seven projects that aim to optimise the performance of lithium ion technologies.

Beyond Lithium Ion

Three projects are looking beyond the limits of lithium ion technology to the development and commercialisation of new battery chemistries.

View our Scientific Publications

Our Impact

From research discoveries to commercial spin-outs, policy guidance to public engagement, this selection of case studies from the Faraday Institution and its research community demonstrates the impacts we are making on UK science, the economy and future generations of researchers.

Smaller Projects and Fellowships

The Faraday Institution funds a variety of smaller, shorter-term projects and fellowships:

Batteries For Emerging Economies

The Faraday Institution is leading the UK Government’s Ayrton Challenge on Energy Storage including a £5m R&D programme to support clean energy delivery in the global south.

Seed Projects

Sixteen small, fast-paced, focused projects that began in June 2022, widening the organisation’s research scope, and set of university partners, in an initiative that will inform future research priorities.

Industry Sprints

Short projects focused on specific short-term industry research needs that lie within the broad scope of our research projects.

Industry Fellows

This innovative programme is strengthening ties between industry and academic battery researchers in the UK with the aim of establishing or enhancing collaborative research with the potential for near- and longer-term benefit to the UK battery industry.

Entrepreneurial Fellows

Financial and business support to start-ups in the area of energy storage technologies to drive battery innovation.

Research Community

The Faraday Institution has created a flourishing environment for commercially relevant energy storage research and innovation. It has united a powerhouse of a research community – 500+ strong from across 27 universities – working with 122 industrial partners. Highly competitive university research groups across the UK now work in active collaboration. Over half of the scientists engaged as co-investigators on our research projects are new to battery science, having transferred their expertise from other areas of materials sciences. Read how…

Researcher Spotlights

Meet the Faraday Five Hundred! The Faraday Institution has over 500 researchers from various universities, disciplines, projects, and career stages. These researcher spotlights highlight their important work, the range of journeys into battery science, and the multi-dimensional diversity in our community.

Alastair Hales

Alastair is an industry fellow and lecturer at the University of Bristol improving model parameterisation for thermal management systems in lithium-ion batteries. He tells us about his struggles with imposter syndrome and collaborating with researchers from different areas of expertise.

Katja Kress

Katja is a PhD researcher at the University of Sheffield developing new battery materials as part of the Faraday Institution’s FutureCat project. She tells us about her work, the importance of facing your fears, and her journey moving from Germany to the UK for a PhD during a pandemic.

Chunhong Lei

Chunhong Lei is a research associate at the University of Leicester developing a novel delamination technique to return high-purity materials to new battery manufacture as part of the Faraday Institution’s ReLiB project. He tells us about leading a highly collaborative team during the pandemic, and the importance of battery recycling.

Our Research Programme by the Numbers

27

Universities

122

Industry partners

500

Researchers

£173m

Committed to application inspired research

777

Scientific papers published

40

Inventions identified

Faraday Battery Challenge Innovation And Scale-up

See details of the latest projects funded through the Faraday Battery Challenge, including collaborative
R&D projects funded through InnovateUK and the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre

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